


May Death Find You Alive

by the_chaotic_panda



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Death, Disturbing Themes, Dubious Science, Fluff, Frottage, Funerals, Gore, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hand Jobs, Kid Fic, M/M, Murder, Pining, Smut, So much death, There's a fun tag, seriously, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-14 10:02:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15386361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_chaotic_panda/pseuds/the_chaotic_panda
Summary: Pete wants Patrick. Dead or alive.





	1. Doomed (But Just Enough)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Das_velorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Das_velorene_Kind).



> Happy birthday to the wonderful @das_velorene_kind, you're lovely and wonderful and absolutely do not deserve the handful of entrails I am about to inflict upon you. 
> 
> This is messed up. Like, seriously. "But Panda, everything you write is messed up!" Not like this. This is what St Peter will brandish in my face when I ask if I'm allowed into Heaven. This is disturbing, and cruel, and psychotic, and Kindchen in no way asked for this. Please direct all anon hate to my tumblr @the-chaotic-panda. 
> 
> Warning: I was very close to tagging this necrophilia. So, yeah. Same time next week? 
> 
> Not for the faint-hearted. You have been warned.

_“You seek for knowledge as I once did… you are pursuing the same course…exposing yourself to the same dangers - perhaps you can deduce an apt moral from my tale.”_

Peter snorts as he reads aloud to the room full of corpses. “What utter drivel!” he shouts, “for what morals are there in death! The worms do not give a damn whether you've led a saint’s life or that of the most scandalous fool!”

“And what madness!” Pete continues, standing and striding between the tables, staring in the faces of each of the corpses that still possess faces, “To create such a hideous beast! If you are to undertake the task of resurrection, why in God’s good name would you waste it on such a foul creature! Only the loveliest of things should be returned to this life. That is, in fact, the reason why all of you will stay firmly dead.”

Agreement rings in Pete's ears, although the bodies remain still. He looks into the sunken face of a woman by the name of Mrs. Carpenter, who seems quietly disapproving.

“You don't seriously think this Shelley knows what the devil she's talking about,” he scoffs, pulling his chair closer to the corpse and holding the book to his nose. “Listen: Frankenstein requires _lifeless matter_ which he retrieves from charnel houses. What stupidity! Animal parts cannot be substituted for the organs of humans, even less so _dead_ animal parts, what does this boy think he's doing? Why must he construct an entirely creature when the human body itself is perfectly built!”

Mrs Carpenter isn't quite convinced, though. Pete simply huffs, prises her dead eyes open.

“Would you look at me? Do you think I am a fraud? I know far more of the workings of the body than this - this - _child,_ who thinks he can improve upon the human form! Reanimation would be far easier, had he simply used a complete corpse. And why, pray tell, did the silly boy think that abandoning his own creation would somehow cleanse his spirit? This is what I am explaining to you, Mrs. Carpenter, there are no morals in death. You cannot do wrong by a corpse. You are all destined for the worm!”

~*~

40 Laystall St., London. 3rd May, 1841.

Dearest Peter,

I sincerely hope, as always, that this letter finds you in good health. You have my greatest apologies for the tardiness of my response; my plans for letter-writing have been frustrated on account of the arrival of little Amelia, who has us all thoroughly enraptured. She has quite the prettiest eyes you will ever see - and a temper to shake the earth. I had forgotten the great joys of an infant in our company; I implore you, once again, to visit if your business may spare you. Clara would be just thrilled to meet you, after all I have spoken about you.

My mother's health has greatly improved since the weather grew most favourable, and both Clara and I are faring well, having thankfully escaped the blight of influenza which afflicted many over the winter. James has grown into quite the gentleman - he will be attending prep school come the autumn, although I suspect he is growing tired of my own reminiscences. Perhaps you remember our young man's antics at Rochester - the dreadful tricks we played upon poor Mr. Carter. I am told the professors are far more readily punishing of their pupils, yet I somehow doubt that this will be effective. Schoolboys have a habit of causing trouble even with the most menacing of learning-shovers.

Mary seems to resemble Clara more closely each day, although her personality, I've been reliably informed, is rather more similar to my own. She's shown great interest in the pianoforte, which cheers my heart greatly, and is progressing marvellously. I fear she will soon surpass me in skill, a fact that seems to motivate her above all else.

My dear friend, do you still pen such beautiful poetry as I remember from our previous correspondence? It would give me great pleasure to read your work again, you have a talent beyond any I have known. The likes of Browning and Wordsworth ought to look to you for guidance on the artistry of the spoken word.

Are you well, Peter? As I have said, I truly hope your health is faring well, but I do worry for you and your tendency towards low spirits. I should very much like to see you again, so that we might pass a few nights of merriment and dispel that rotten melancholia, if I should be so bold as to give it that name. When the time is nearer, we can perhaps fix it with more certainty, but I am determined to see you before the summer draws to a close.

I should be quite pleased to receive a letter from you as I will want to hear from you before long - do not doubt that I will journey to Richmond if I have reason to fear for your well-being. In the meantime, I wish you many happy returns, and a summer that others may envy in its prosperity.

Your affectionate friend,

Patrick M. Stumph

~*~

Peter stares down at the paper, rough between his fingers and rustling as he smooths out the folds, Patrick's looped, slanting hand flowing easily over the page. He always did have an artistry about him, his movements as graceful as brushstrokes and his voice a splash of ink across the so far blank canvas of Pete's life. There was music in his smile and a symphony in his laughter; Pete can all but hear it through the words.

He had meant to reply. Every evening, he would sit at his desk, his sheet as empty as his mind. He was usually so full of poetry, scrawling smudged stanzas in the small hours, all of it for Patrick yet none of it set to see the light of day. Visiting was out of the question - Pete simply couldn't bear to show his face after the last time, after being so unduly humiliated - but Patrick's letters had brought such sunshine in their wake, the knowledge that somebody still cared for him lightening the dullness in Pete's head.

He would, Pete decides, have liked to have seen Patrick one last time, to watch the infectious grin form on his face, to see how time had aged his flawless skin, whether it had dampened his spirits or ravaged his body. He looks from the letter in his hand to the newspaper upon the desk in front of him.

_Obituary_

_~*~_

_Died, at St. Andrew's Gardens, on the 22nd of July, Patrick Martin Stumph, aged 31, after tragically falling from a horse. The deceased was third son of the late Mr. and Mrs. David Stumph, former residents of Maidstone, of which place he was native. His pleasant disposition made him many friends, and he was known for his kindness, honesty and gentleness as a husband and father. The deceased is survived by his wife, Mrs. Clara Able Stumph, his three sons, James, Isaac and Alexander, and two daughters, Mary and baby Amelia, all of this city._

_The funeral will take place tomorrow at 2 o'clock p. m., from the deceased’s residence at 40 Laystall St. and Christ Church, Chelsea._

_~*~_

It's something like grief that weighs on Pete's chest - something like compassion, something like anger - but not quite. He was cheated of Patrick's company, of what was rightfully his. He closes the newspaper, can no longer bear to look at Patrick's name alongside his wife's, his children's.

_Serves him right,_ Pete thinks at the greyed London sky beyond his window. He always was a clumsy sod, Pete knew he'd meet a sticky end. He wonders if that youthful face of his is still intact, if he was granted a peaceful passing, or if his graceful cheekbones caved under thundering hooves. Two o'clock. Pete would rather like to find out.

~*~

"Peter Wentz?"

Pete stared. The boy stared back, wonderfully blue eyes blinking in the shaft of light filtering through the window. He was, in this first meeting, an angel, an incarnation of all Pete prayed for each night, his blond hair dancing with the dust of long abandoned bedding. When he smiled, Pete's perception of what it was to believe was re-imagined, reborn - how could there be a presence of God more potent than this?

"I do believe we're to share a room," the boy said, his voice a church bell singing through his stained-glass window soul. "My name is Patrick Stumph."

"I - yes, I'm Pete, I - what a pleasure it is to meet you," Pete stammered, for what else could one say to such a vision?

Patrick held out a hand, white as the rest of him, fingers sharing the elegance of his voice and the delicacy of his manner. Pete hesitated to touch it, for fear of sacrilege - Pete could not share the warmth of this creature, surely not even the Angel Gabriel himself could brush an inch of his flesh without tainting him. Pete’s hand twitched by his side.

“I’m not passing pox, I assure you,” the boy laughed, a wind chime in a summer breeze. Pete was certain, as their palms touched, that the sun blazed brighter and the birds sung with the vitality of a congregation.

His fingers clasped Pete’s firmly, as if to draw Pete in all the more, as if Pete hadn’t already given himself over. Pete savoured the warmth, committed it to memory, watched Patrick’s glowing hand return to its partner, his palms meeting, writhing together. Pete wondered what they’d look like with nails driven through them.

“Well, Peter - Pete,” Patrick corrected, flashing his shy smile and elevating Pete to the Kingdom of Heaven, “I think we’ll be firm friends.”

~*~

“Peter Wentz?”

Pete stares. He'd love to make the assumption that she is a ghastly woman, a mot, a hag, unfit for public display and certainly unfit for Patrick. But, alas, she's perfectly lovely, her pale face streaked with tears and even her deepest mourning dress evident of a shapely figure. Pete wishes it was her in the casket.

“You’re an old friend of his, are you not?” she asks, her voice rising like that of a song bird, yet Pete still hears the hiss of a snake.

“Something like that, yes,” Pete replies, pulling at the fingers of his seldom-used gloves. A young boy flits around his feet, clutching at his mother’s skirts and watching Pete warily. He doesn't have the honey-blond hair, the full lips, the rounded face - but the _eyes._ If Pete saw them on anyone else he’d assume it was Patrick himself, returned from the spirit world. They send a chill through his bones, a shiver of longing. Pete rather hates the boy. How dare he.

“This is Alexander,” Clara informs him, stroking a gloved hand through the child's hair. “Did you know Patrick well?”

“Clearly not,” Pete says, staring at the child until he hides his face, shuts those tempting eyes. “I'd never met his family.”

“Oh - well, my sincerest apologies. We will all miss him terribly.” The rather strange thing is that she looks like she believes it.

“Was he an honourable husband?” Pete asks through gritted teeth. He hopes he wasn’t - he hopes Patrick sunk his cock into a different whore every evening, he hopes his children feared the cane at his side and the sting of his palm.

“He was the love of my life,” she says, “I - I'd never thought I would be so immeasurably lucky as to marry a man so truly kind, with such affection in his heart, I -”

“What a pity it is that your luck didn’t last,” Pete observes. “I look forward to the service. Your home is quite beautiful.” He walks away.

Patrick's body is laid out in a polished oak coffin, surrounded by all manner of flowers, the soft smell of lavender floating from it. Mourners drift around it, hats clasped to their chests as they speak words Patrick will never hear. A girl in a white dress is wailing rather loudly into the chest of a boy. A curl of jealousy stirs in Pete's chest - what saintly acts did they perform to warrant a life spent so close to Patrick?

He's dressed in his Sunday finery, propped up slightly, his hands clasped on his stomach as if he’d simply lain down for an afternoon nap. He's older, more angular in his face yet more paunch on his belly. Pete waits for his turn to peer, to leer at the body and think _such a pity, those poor children, thank god it wasn't me,_ as per standard procedure. It's the closest he's been to Patrick in years.

Much to Pete's dismay, his face isn't ruined. His brow is unblemished, his lips full, blushing with a touch of rouge, his nose, his cheekbones as sculpted as they ever were. Pete wonders what devil would entice men even in death.

Pete touches a hand to Patrick's, fitting his fingers against Patrick's palm. His old warmth has faded. There's no surge of heavenly feeling, no burst of light within Pete's soul. Pete feels slighted. Patrick surely cannot tease him with notions that such angelic power can be extinguished with a simple knock to the head.

The feathers of doves could not be softer than Patrick’s fingertips, nor paler or more beautiful. Pete imagines that they twitch, grasp, clutch at Pete's hand, that he’ll wake, eyes for Pete and only for Pete. It's not nearly the first time Pete's thought about kissing him, about claiming him for his own. If only he were still breathing - Pete would take great pleasure in driving a wedge between Patrick and his family in the shape of his own mangled heart.

It starts as a tugging sensation, the idea - a bird pulling on a worm, a snag of skin caught in a button - and although Pete tries to free himself from it, he can never quite squash it flat. It nags as he gazes at Patrick's face, absent of the twitch of living skin and the flinch of fluttering eyelashes. Goodness, how he longs to hear Patrick's voice again, the tone of it scaling the octaves with each smiled sentence. Pete wants to hear him laugh, hear him talk, hear him scream with dread, with pain, with passion.

"Excuse me, Sir, but will you be much longer?" a gentleman behind Pete questions, "there are others who would like to pay their respects."

Pete turns, glares, snatches his hand from Patrick's still fingers and walks away. He can feel the man's eyes on him - Pete watches as he and his family bend over the coffin, whisper falsities, erase Pete's touch with their unfounded affections. The house is full with mourners, all pining for a fallen Angel, for _Pete's_ Angel, too stupid to see that the grave will not be his final resting place. Pete makes his decision there and then - gone, Patrick will not stay.

~*~

The graveside is moist with summer showers and the air is heavy with the scent of foliage as the coffin is lowered into the ground, the clergyman reading his usual assumptions of the fate of the deceased. Patrick's sons huddle together, each of them bearing a piece of his stolen features; Pete rather wishes he could tear them up and sew them into their father, Clara's contributions left as swill for the pigs.

It pains him that they're so obviously brothers - Pete had hoped that one might have eyes slightly too dark, skin a shade too dusky, living proof of Clara's wickedness and Patrick's inadequacy. Pete curses himself for refusing to meet this wretched family sooner; he would have fucked Clara himself if it would sever Patrick from the confines of his children.

He watches the coffin as it's slowly covered over with earth, Patrick's body finally committed to the ground and his soul destined for the heavens. Pete hides a smile behind his glove. Neither Patrick's body, nor his soul, will complete its journey. Pete will have them both for himself.

~*~

"He'll be beautiful," Pete says, stroking Mrs. Carpenter's now rotting face and picturing porcelain skin beneath his fingers. "He'll be an Angel of my own making."

The sheets covering his desk are filled with his spiked scrawl, diagrams depicting electrodes, syringes, the heart and the brain and how to bring them both to life with one bolt of sizzling electricity. He won't need lightning; zinc and copper will do just fine, foraged from his own stores and hammered flat. He mixes the salt solution slowly, dropping rags into it and stirring until they're soaked.

Once they're stacked, copper, cloth, zinc, copper, cloth, over and over and topped with a final zinc disc, he takes two wires and pastes them in place with glue - boiled by Pete himself, of course, he'd never liked next door's cat. His black gloves do, apparently, have more uses than simply funeral wear, and he pulls them on, flexing his fingers over Mrs. Carpenter's face and pinching a wire in each hand.

"Are you ready, Mrs. Carpenter?" he whispers to her, "You're about to become far more useful in death than you ever were in life."

With a breath and a prayer, he presses the wires to her temples. The effect is immediate and astounding.

She twitches, first in her face and then spreading, her eyes flying open and her jaw snapping shut, tense. Her shoulders hunch, her arms tremble and her hands go rigid, clasping, grabbing. A smile spreads across Pete's face as she convulses in front of him, so much life where there once was only decay, her legs curling and kicking sporadically, a spider half-squashed and squirming.

Pete could watch her all day. When he finally drops the wires, she falls like a puppet with strings cut.

"Good God, woman," Pete laughs as he drops back into his chair, joy widening his eyes. "That was quite marvellous."

There's a hunger in his chest that was awakened with the first twitch of Mrs. Carpenter's body. He'd planned to wait one more day, make sure his science was sound, but he'd planned for faults, for failure. Now he's nose to nose with success and he cannot will himself to stall any longer.

"I shall do it tonight," he tells Mrs. Carpenter, "I shall awaken him before the dawn. He'll be mine, to do with as I wish."

~*~

The graveyard is utterly different by night. The flowers scattered about the graves are shrouded by darkness, the trees becoming looming figures with reaching hands in absence of delicate blossom. Headstones wander about him, teeth in the jaws of the earth, hungry for the dead.

Patrick's grave is freshly dug, the earth loose, dark against the grass around it. It happens all too often, the stealing of bodies from where they rest; Mrs. Carpenter herself was sold to Pete by a gentleman who looked neither like a family member nor a mortician - but Pete knows not to ask questions, to quietly hand over the money with a smile and a plea for more, as soon as possible, as many as possible.  
  
He knows roughly how they do it; a tunnel dug down to the head of the coffin, the wood wrenched open and the body dragged out. The shovel bites into the earth with the most awful rasp, unmistakably the scraping of dirt against metal. Pete stops, casts a glance about himself, watches for the shifts of figures within the railings of the churchyard. He'd seen no guards upon his entrance, only the shadows of lumbering drunkards spilling from the alleyways.  
  
Digging steals the breath from his lungs faster than he'd care to admit. The earth is soft enough, but moist from the light summer showers and tightly packed by gravediggers whose work resists ruin. Pete curses at the ground, leaning on his shovel and rather wishing he'd endeavoured to be more of a sportsman; perhaps then, his arms wouldn't burn quite so potently, his throat wouldn't ache with cool air pulled in too fast.  
  
But he thinks of Patrick. Each thrust of his shovel into the earth brings him closer, crumbles Patrick's defences, breaches his privacy in a way that makes Pete growl with the power, the might he wields. The thrill that rushes through him as he feels oaken resistance beneath him would be enough to awaken even the most stubborn of corpses.  
  
He drops to his knees, taking the shovel in both hands and lodging it into the seam of the wood, pushing until it starts to crack open. He can barely see his progress, the moonlight obscured and only just peeking over the brim of the pit he's immersed himself in, but he can still see the clean white of the shroud, the glint of copper-blond hair as he pulls it aside.  
  
For a moment, he simply stares at the crown of Patrick's head, touches his hand to the small patch of baldness, feels his chilled skull through discoloured skin. His hair is as soft as Pete remembers, fine silk slipping through Pete's fingers. He cannot wait to whisper loving words into it, to press his nose to it, to run his hands through it in a haze of blinding passion.  
  
Without further delay, he grips the lining of the coffin and pulls, wrenching with all his might. The body slides into view, and Pete scrambles to pull both himself and Patrick from the pit, cursing the wretched man for letting himself get so damned fat. He ends up tucking his hands under Patrick's arms and scrabbling backwards out of the hole, managing eventually to sit himself on its edge and catch his breath.

The smell is incomparable to any other. Pete is used to it, it's already in his clothes, burned into the walls of his laboratory, but it is instantly recognisable as that of decay. He's been quick - Patrick is still mostly intact, but the smell of lavender and mint futile in the face of putrefaction, even with the help of a skilled embalmer. Pete prays he's not too late.

Eventually, he's succeeded in heaving Patrick's body out of the pit and onto the dirt-strewn ground. They're both filthy, Patrick's suit muddied and Pete caked head to toe in earth. He attempts to brush himself down, ruining his handkerchief but cleaning his face of muck. He does his best to fill in the hole, patting down the dirt in the greying light until he gives up, looks down at Patrick and wonders how in Heaven's name he's going to convince the cab driver that this is nothing out of the ordinary.

Hefting Patrick into his arms, he staggers back through the churchyard, the shovel forgotten and buried with the ruins of Patrick's coffin. He's heavy, slightly bloated with the gases of decay and Pete daren't look too closely at his face, not until he has the means to fix what death so cruelly dealt.

The cab awaits at the end of the street, the horse dark and restless against a backdrop of glowing houses. Pete stops before the church gates, places Patrick's feet upon the ground and drags him upright. He can feel Patrick's nose nudged into his collarbone as he begins to stumble down the dusted road.

"I weren't warned 'bout no more passengers," is the first thing the driver tells him.

"He's drunk, sound asleep," Pete replies, "found the poor blighter in a ditch just off Swan Walk. He shan't be any trouble."

"He don't look like no drunk," the driver says, peering at Patrick through the moonlit gloom. "Tha's a gentleman, that is. I don't want no business messin' with a gentleman."

"Nosy little bugger, aren't you," Pete observes. "Perhaps this," he continues, securing an arm around Patrick and digging into his coat pocket with the other, "will put your mind at rest?"

Pete tosses a half-crown in the driver's direction and he rushes to catch it. "Yes, Sir - that'll do me nicely," he gabbles, opening the door and allowing Pete to pull Patrick into the cab and attempt to arrange his limbs into a vaguely lifelike position. He ends up slumped into Pete's shoulder, his mouth hanging slightly open and a foul smell drifting out; Pete pushes his jaw closed with a sigh and takes one of Patrick's hands into his lap, his thumb stroking over Patrick's palm.

"Back to Hammersmith?" the driver asks from his seat above them, and Pete responds in the affirmative, leaning his head back against the leather and closing his eyes as they begin to move forward. He can hardly believe he finally has Patrick so near; his face resting upon Pete's chest and his fingers laced with Pete's. It's been years since Pete had the privilege even to shake Patrick's hand.

~*~

"Mr. Stumph, I - I wasn't expecting you, I -"

"I do hate to intrude upon you, my good man, but I was left with no other option - I've written to you countless times, Pete, why did you not see fit to respond? And enough of this _Mr. Stumph_ nonsense, you'll call me Patrick, as you always have, and nothing else."

He was heavenly as ever. Pete found himself short of breath in his presence, captivated by his every move. Light poured into Pete's study, illuminating Patrick's figure, stinging Pete's eyes. "Mr - Patrick, I - I didn't think - come in, I - I realise now I've rather longed to see you. Thank you, Henry," he nodded to the butler, who bowed and backed out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Patrick looked around at Pete's study, his books strewn over the desk, the floor and most other surfaces, dark shapes in the dim light. He tutted, striding over to the window. "Good God, man, it's dark in here," he said, before ripping the curtains open an flooding the room with sunlight. "How on earth do you work in these conditions?" He gestured to the mess all over the floor, the burnt out candles, the papers Pete refused to let his housekeeper touch.

"I prefer the dark," Pete mumbled, raising his eyes to meet Patrick's and feeling a rush of warmth as Patrick's gaze rested on him. He'd forgotten quite how beautiful Patrick's eyes were.

"It's not healthy," Patrick stated, scooping papers off the armchair across the room and settling himself into it. "You must get some air, Pete, give yourself a break from - whatever it is that takes up so much of your time."

"My work is of great importance," he said to the page in front of him, "you wouldn't understand."

Patrick sighed, raising a delicate eyebrow at him. "For a man so highly intelligent, you can be immensely stupid. From what I've heard, you've barely been out of the house since I moved away. What has happened to you?"

"I prefer not to frequent society."

"You'd prefer not to socialise at all," Patrick said, "not even with your closest friend. Am I really so insufferable?"

Guilt weighed heavy on Pete's chest as he saw the sadness on Patrick's face. "You're quite the opposite," he said softly, wondering whether this is a sign, a Heaven-sent message to urge Pete to act. He placed his pen down and looked at Patrick carefully. A year hadn't taken much toll upon him; if anything, he seemed to emanate greater vitality, maturity only accentuating his beauty, his cheekbones more pronounced and carved with the skill of Michelangelo himself.

"What has been troubling you, Pete?" he said gently, and Pete wondered if he knew. He must have known. Anyone who had caught a glimpse of the way he looked at Patrick must have known.

"I -" he started, his lips twitching with the want to tell him, to spill it all like ink over the floor between them. "It is nothing."

"It is _not_ nothing," Patrick said sternly, "and I shan't be leaving until you've confided in me." He sat back in his chair, crossing his legs and linking his hands over his lap.

Pete sighed, rising from his chair and drifting along the bookshelf towards Patrick. He paced in front of the armchair, Patrick's eyes following him as he moved. "It is a rather personal matter," he said finally, heat in his face, buzzing in his fingertips. "It is not - proper."

"What does propriety matter between friends?" Patrick said, and Pete considered his words. What they used to do was hardly proper. Perhaps this was what Patrick was alluding to. Perhaps this was exactly why he was here.

Pete decided he must look Patrick in the eye when he told him. He wanted to see how exactly he reacted, he wanted to see his own lusts reflected in baby blue. Turning to face Patrick, he touched a hand to his knee, feeling the warmth of Patrick's skin beneath the fabric of his trousers. This alone sent a rush of excitement through Pete's veins.

"I've missed you terribly," Pete said softly, watching Patrick's hands move to the arms of the chair, his elegant fingers curling over the wood. Pete wanted them running through his hair.

"I've missed you too," Patrick replied, "I do wish you'd write, Peter, I -"

"No, no, you don't understand," Pete huffed, "I've - I've _missed_ you," he repeated, now by Patrick's side, reaching over him to slide his hand up Patrick's leg, then jumping a few inches to cup his crotch.

“No, Pete,” he said, picking Pete’s palm off himself and pushing it back towards him.

“But,” Pete protested, lunging again to press his hand between Patrick’s legs, and staring, pleading, when Patrick caught his wrist and shook his head.

“Not anymore,” Patrick sighed, his eyes apologetic, ungrateful, as he looked up at Pete.

“I want you,” Pete blurted, “I want to have you, I want you to belong to me again.”

“I was never yours,” Patrick said gently, and it sliced through Pete like a scalpel. He kept hold of Pete’s hand, squeezing it in his own as Pete sunk to the floor beside him. “Do you remember why I left?”

“You said I needed someone else,” Pete said to the arm of the chair, feeling the stroke of Patrick's thumb over his palm. “You said you didn't want me.”

“I said that you deserve a man who loves you like a husband loves his wife,” Patrick told him, “and that man is not me.”

“But you - you - we did things in the dark that would not have been done had we not wanted each other,” Pete implored, anger shrinking to embarrassment as he looked into Patrick's pitying eyes.

“I cannot deny that I did want you,” he said, “but I did not fall in love with you, Pete. To stay with you, to toy with your feelings when I possessed none of my own would have been - unforgivable.”

“What does love matter,” Pete said, his voice rising, “want will do just as well!”

“It matters to me,” Patrick replied, calm as ever and squeezing Pete's hand to the rhythm of his sea-breeze voice. He looked ready to say more, his rose-petal lips fluttering.

Instead, they sat in silence. Pete could feel Patrick’s pulse through the tips of his fingers, see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. How cruel a man God must be to have created such a magnificent creature and placed him within Pete’s grasp, only to snatch him away once Pete reached for him.

“Also, Pete, I’ve -” Patrick started, looking away from Pete and down at his lap. “I’ve met someone else.”

Pete’s blood chilled to sub-zero temperatures in the space of a breath. “You’ve - you’ve - _what?!”_ he cried, wrenching his hand from Patrick’s and rising to his feet. “Who?! What man means more to you than I?”

Patrick let out a breath, a cheating, guilty breath and raised his eyes to meet Pete’s. “She’s a woman, Pete.”

“A - a woman?!” Pete shouted, “you - you’re abandoning me for some - common _whore?!_ ”

“She’s not a whore,” he said, “her name is Clara and -”

“I don’t give a damn what her name is! How can you -”

“I love her, Pete,” Patrick interrupted, and Pete’s mouth snapped shut. “I’ve fallen in love with her.”

“No,” Pete told him, “no, you haven’t. You’re meant for me. You’re mine.”

There was pity, a damned lakeful of pity rippling in Patrick’s eyes as he shook his head at Pete yet again, told Pete _no_ when he had no right to deny Pete this pleasure. “I’m not yours.”

“That is not what you said when you were swallowing my cock,” Pete spat. “I know what you like, Patrick, and it’s not - _quim.”_

His attempt to ruffle Patrick seemed not to have succeeded. He remained utterly composed as he said, “As it happens, I rather think it is.”

Pete clenched his fists, wanting both to run his hands over Patrick's face and to wrap them around his neck. “You like men! You like _me!”_

“I've found that both the sexes are to my taste,” he mused, “and Clara, she's quite the most lovely woman you’ll ever meet. I - I hope to marry her come the spring.”

Pete hated him. Pete wished the sunlight would burn him, wished him to sink into the arms of Lucifer and crumble into ash. “You shan’t be married. I will not stand for it.”

“I'll do what I like, regardless of whether you stand for it,” Patrick snapped, his eyes lit with annoyance for only a second before settling back into composure.

Pete flinched, glaring at the creature sitting in front of him. He was surely a temptation, a test for Pete, for no human could possess such inviting hands, such lustful lips, such an elegant jaw. Perhaps this was a challenge - perhaps he was meant to fight for Patrick. “There are plenty of husbands who are not faithful to their wives. Plenty more who invite boys into their beds. We could - “

“Peter,” Patrick sighed, “I'm in love with her.”

“What does that matter? She would not know. And should she question it? You may beat her for forgetting her place.”

Patrick's face wrinkled in disgust. “You really know nothing of kindness, do you? If I ever lay a wrathful hand upon her, may the Devil take me.”

“It is the right of a man to bed whomever he desires,” Pete said curtly, pulling at his own cuffs and looking carefully away from Patrick. No woman could ever match up to Pete, Patrick must surely have known this.

“I desire only to lie with my future wife,” Patrick responded, “my body belongs to her and her alone.”

“Then you are a poor excuse for a man,” Pete growled, “is it her who has filled your head with this nonsense? Are you so weak as to let some arrogant cow tell you what you can and can't do? Is her cunt so delectable that you lose a portion of your senses every time you ram your cock into her?”

Patrick's gaze chilled to something less forgiving as he watched Pete pace. "Do not speak of her like that. I understand your anger, but I won't have such vulgarity directed towards the woman I love."  
  
"I wonder if she loves you, Patrick," Pete said lightly, "I wonder if she really, truly loves you, or if you're simply a gullible gentleman for her to exploit? I wonder, when you inevitably poison the planet with your offspring, if it will truly be of your seed, or instead the child of one of the countless other idiotic gentlemen your blessed wife has _fucked_ -"  
  
"Enough," Patrick said finally, "one more of your detestable insults and I will see myself out."  
  
Pete took a breath, steadying the anger within him on Patrick's steely gaze. He thought what might happen if he kept pushing, if he frayed the thread of Patrick's temper until it snapped. Would he shout, would he lunge at Pete, would he smack a fist into his mouth? Pete would have taken a punch over nothing at all.  
  
"Pete," Patrick tried, gentler this time, "I don't mean to abandon you. We can still be friends, Pete, that's really the purpose of my coming here, to renew our friendship, to - to make sure that you're quite alright. Are you - alright?" He looked rather afraid of the answer.  
  
"I'll be a damn sight better once you've left me in peace," Pete grumbled, sitting himself back down at his desk. He pretended to immerse himself in his papers whilst silently imploring that Patrick stayed.  
  
"Pete, please," Patrick said softly, and Pete savoured his own name sung in such honeyed tones, "I can't give you what you want. But - but I can help you, Pete, I can help you find someone else, there's no shortage of confirmed bachelors in the city, all of them far richer and far more handsome than I."  
  
He was lying, Pete knew it. No-one so lovely, so definitive of perfection, could truthfully say such a thing. Patrick stood, paced towards Pete's desk. He looked beautiful in his suit - although not quite as beautiful as he was when sprawled underneath Pete in only his nightshirt. He reached out to Pete, pushing the papers aside.  
  
"Let us not part enemies," Patrick whispered, and he had that very look on his face that meant Pete would forgive him any sin. Pete could only nod as he looked into Patrick's eyes, the eyes of a saint, of an Angel. "You're a good man, Pete. You will know love soon enough."  
  
Pete nearly let out a laugh, because Angel or not, Patrick was so very ignorant. The love Pete felt was beyond any that Patrick would ever experience. The love Pete felt was a worship, a want to give each part of himself to the man that stood before him. Instead, he reached for Patrick, his heart leaping when Patrick let him take his hand.    
  
"May I kiss you," Pete asked quietly, his eyes drifting to Patrick's lips.

Patrick simply shook his head. "No. I'm sorry, Pete."

Pete nodded, and let go of Patrick's hand.

~*~

Patrick's body is helpless beneath him. Pete smiles down at it, laying there on the table, pride of place among the half-finished autopsies of Mrs Carpenter and her companions. He can barely find it within himself to admit it, but Patrick's looking rather worse for wear than he previously thought - in the light of Pete's lamps, his skin isn't porcelain, but greying paper, mottled with dark patches and deep shadows in the hollows of his eyes. Still, Pete feels it's his duty, his heaven born _right,_ to lean over and press his lips to Patrick's for the first time in nearly a decade.

They taste foul, rotten, far from the ripe fruit they once were, but Pete savours them anyway; they're a trophy, a spoil of the war he's waged over love. He can only imagine how delicious they'll be once they're warm, red, pushing against his own.

Patrick is finally his own. He runs a hand through Patrick's hair, and another over his chest, and not a soul lifts a finger by which to stop him. Slowly, he unbuttons Patrick's waistcoat, eases his arms from his jacket, undoes his pearly white shirt, his pulse speeding with each fresh inch of Patrick's skin he reveals. It's a strange thrill, to see an Angel so ruined.

Pete’s fingers pause only when they’re tucked into the waistband of Patrick’s drawers, snug between the softness of fabric and flesh. What lies beneath them has been the subject of ten years of fantasy, endless nights spent with his eyes shut tight as he tried to persuade himself that what he was feeling wasn't induced via his own fingers. Beyond that, he longs to strip Patrick of all that wretched dignity he carried with him like a flag raised aloft, taunting, ridiculing Pete.

But he refrains. Such things must be saved for a moment when he can look into Patrick's eyes and see the fear on his face when Pete takes what he's owed.

Patrick's body is much the same as Pete remembers it; pale, the kind of pale that seems to glow under the lights, small, rounded nipples with a fuzz of reddish hair between them. Pete brushes a hand over one, recalls how Patrick would twitch, would gasp at the sensation. He's considerably rounder than he used to be - his jawline hidden under a feast too many and his belly bulging over his waistband. Pete longs to nip at the extra flesh, to curl himself against Patrick's absent warmth.

Instead, he wraps a piece of wire around Patrick's wrists and secures them to the leg of the table, just in case. It wouldn't be the first time a body has decided to take a wander - only a few days ago, Pete could have sworn he caught Mrs Carpenter up and about. Patrick won't leave him, not this time.

 

The street outside is as dead as the contents of Pete's laboratory. He places his hat on his head and makes his way towards the centre of the town, following the distant shouts of hedge-creepers and drunkards and all manner of other creatures undeserving of the very air they breathe.

Pete knows exactly who he's looking for. Mr. Henderson couldn't find it within himself to refrain from knocking down Pete's door at all hours of the day, couldn't bear to leave Pete to go about his business without accusing him of all manner of horrors when he himself spends his nights drinking himself immeasurably more stupid.

Where he'll be is clear from the beastly shouts that seep through Pete’s windows like a disease each night - without fail, he'll stumble home this way. Pete immerses himself in the shadows of an unknown porch as he waits.

The Heavens must be on Pete's side, for when Mr. Henderson trips into view, he's alone, exposed, unprotected. Pete's rather glad that the drink hasn't chosen tonight to stop the man's heart - Pete would much rather feel it slow under his own fingers.

There's a buzzing in his brain that only ever comes with the anticipation of taking a life, a rush of tipping excitement that Pete can hardly keep from showing on his face. Mr Henderson waddles past him, his hat clasped in red, swollen fingers and his eyes rolling in his skull. Pete's surely doing all of humanity a favour when he steps into the light and wraps a piece of wire around Mr. Henderson’s neck.

The man barely struggles as Pete tightens the wire’s pull, a pathetic squelching sound rasping from his lips. His hands scrabble for Pete like a rat scrabbles in a trap, fighting for no other reason than to tell Satan that he tried.

Eventually, he falls limp against Pete, his face tinged purple and his hands dropping to his sides. Pete scoops him up and staggers home, panting hard into the dead man's neck as he tries to lug him up the hill to his laboratory. The next time he does this, he'll certainly choose a smaller person to kill.  
  
Shoving the body through his front door, and grateful, not for the first time, of his lack of staff, Pete takes a moment to catch his breath, looking down at the dead man on his floor. At least this one is fresh.  
  
Mrs. Carpenter is forced to share a table with a rather worse-for-wear Miss Green, who lacks several limbs and an eye. Mrs Carpenter is not at all pleased with this development, but Pete simply doesn't have the time for her complaints, and heaves Mr. Henderson's hefty frame onto her table. Now, he'll fix his Patrick.  
  
First of all, he must drain Patrick's blood. It's dead, rotting, sunk to the lower half of his body and well-settled. How best to rid Patrick of it evades Pete - eventually, he decides upon moving Patrick until his head hangs over the edge of the table, placing a bucket underneath it, and making a small incision at the back of Patrick's neck. In essence, he's drip-drying.  
  
Second, Pete builds his batteries. He'll need more, as many as he can make if he's to reanimate Patrick, and he positions them all about him, wires fastened to Patrick's skin and laying in wait for Pete to complete the circuit. Mr. Henderson doesn't seem to approve of Pete, or indeed Patrick - Pete orders him to hold his tongue, as he is, in fact, next.  
  
When what's still liquid of Patrick's blood has slipped into the bucket, Pete finds his largest syringe and pushes it into the neck of Mr. Henderson. In hindsight, he rather wishes he'd kept the wretched man alive, so Pete could hear him scream for mercy as he forces the blood from his body into someone else. Patrick seems more alive with each ounce of blood he receives, the punctures in his wrists and chest glowing vibrant red in the yellowing light.  
  
By the time the syringe is laid to rest, Mr. Henderson is bleached white all over, and Patrick carries an uneven pink hue that Pete longs to drag his tongue over. But all in good time. First, he must do what Shelley could only dream about - he must cheat death.  
  


The gloves fit cold against his skin as he circles Patrick, his gaze skimming over Patrick's body, thinking of all the ways he will ravish Patrick once he's alive, awake, aware. He wants to show Patrick exactly what love is, and how powerful it can be, how Pete's love goes beyond meaningless marriage and insufferable children, beyond the realms of life itself. And if Patrick has any sense, he'll return Pete's love. It is written in the stars, in the earth, in the entrails of the animals Pete's split apart in place of his own heart - Patrick belongs to him.

His breath is held tight in his chest as he readies himself, the wires clasped in his hands, bending in the vices of his fingers. He leans, presses a kiss to Patrick's forehead - then twists the wires together.

Unlike Mrs. Carpenter, Patrick does not take this gradually. His whole body convulses, legs kicking, fingers grasping, dead eyes flying open and neck pulling taut with agitated muscle. It's a wonder to behold, and Pete stands back to do so, watches Patrick thrash like a child having a nightmare. The power he feels is unlike anything else - Patrick, kind, dignified, autonomous Patrick has become nothing more than a puppet. Pete won't ever let go of his strings.

Pete lets him writhe for another minute, a distressed animal, a beetle flailing on its back. He could gaze at Patrick forever if he wasn't so eager to view his success, to feel Patrick wake under his own hands, to watch his eyes light at the sight of his saviour. With a prayer, he breaks the circuit.

Patrick slumps back to the table, his eyes falling shut and his jaw falling open. His hands twitch with leftover current like spiders not-quite-dead. The rest of him remains deathly still.

Peering over Patrick, Pete hovers hesitant hands around him, barely daring to touch. "Come on, you old sod," Pete whispers, "you can do better than this."

But clearly, Patrick cannot. Anguish floods Pete's bones, tears burn behind his eyes, and he shakes at Patrick's shoulders, willing him to open his eyes, to scream or to beg or to show any sign that he's alive.

"You bastard," Pete cries, thumping Patrick's shoulder his a coiled fist. "You _bastard_!"  

The sobs begin to thunder through him, emptying his heart of anger and leaving it hollow, ravaged. He can only press his face to Patrick's chest and cry, wail like a child because he was so sure it would work, so certain that he'd have his Patrick back, so adamant that death was no match for the brilliant Pete Wentz.

He cries until Patrick's chest is wet with his tears, he cries until he's certain Mrs. Carpenter is cackling at his stupidity. He cries until he feels the _thump-thump_ of Patrick's heartbeat in his ear.

He straightens up. He presses his hand to Patrick's chest, feeling the stuttering rhythm beneath his skin. He watches as Patrick's chest rises, his mouth opening slightly to allow a rush of air into his lungs.

He smiles. It worked.


	2. If Death is the Last Appointment (Don't Let the Doctor In)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps you can deduce an apt moral from my tale...

_"Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became such a thing as even Dante could not have conceived."_   
  
Pete reads his favourite scene to Patrick's body, the book in one hand and Patrick's fingers squeezed tight in the other. "You see, my love, Shelley suggests that you are a monster, a demon more hellish than any in all the nine circles. But she forgets; Dante did not only write of monsters but of the most glorious of Angels - and he truly did not conceive of any as divine as you, my darling."     
  
Patrick is laid out on the table, as he has been for ten hours, now. Pete gazes at him, as he has been for ten years, stroking his thumb over Patrick's palm, playing with his fingers, bringing them to his lips and peppering them with adoring kisses.   
  
"You are no horror. And I am no mortal," Pete whispers, "for you are my creation, and thus I am Creator." Pete strokes a hand over Patrick's clammy forehead, savouring the gentle warmth returning to his skin.   
  
His fingertips have gained back their colour; the grey fading to a gentle pink, the discoloured blotches retracting. There's a pallor about him that perhaps shouldn't be there, a sheen of sweat coating his face as his body attempts to reconcile itself with returning to the earth, but Pete tries his hardest to nurture Patrick, to keep him cool in the heat of the day and warm as the night chills the air. Pete's hardly slept, his eyes fixed upon Patrick and any sign of waking he may show.   
  
  
The symptoms of death still plague him - his cheeks are sunken, his breath foul, his eyes lacking their brightness whenever Pete pries them open, summer blue clouded with grey. He's not what he was. Pete would refrain from admitting it, but he's not a creature of beauty, he's not an Angel. He's a corpse, dragged back into the land of the living. Pete avoids dwelling on the disappointment deep in his chest.   
  
He spends hours fussing over Patrick, combing his hair, brushing his teeth, scrubbing at his torso in an attempt to alleviate the odour of death that surrounds him. There's a wound on the back of his head, a crack in his skull that Pete cleans and plasters carefully, whispering prayers in the hope that it might show signs of healing. He reads to Patrick for a while, a mother familiarising her child with her voice, talking in the hope that Patrick may be able to hear him, remember Pete's kindnesses when he wakes.

Eventually, his eyes cannot bear to stay open a moment longer. He yearns for his bed, and he had hoped he’d have someone to share it with by now. Patrick remains still, fast asleep.

His bed isn’t far; his office lies only a staircase away, a small single bed tucked into the corner. The need for luxuries is lost upon him - his house outside the city long sold and his staff dismissed. He decided long ago that if he could not have Patrick's company, he didn't want any at all. Now he has it, he cannot bear to leave it.

As he stands, he takes Patrick's body with him, curling an arms around his shoulders and another under his knees, holding Patrick tight to his chest. The stairs prove difficult, yet he manages, revelling in prospect of carrying Patrick to his bedroom, wrapping himself in Patrick's sleeping form.

With a sigh, he places Patrick down onto his bed. He takes a few seconds to simply stare at Patrick, his bare chest nestled in the white sheets, the impression of wings in the fabric if Pete squints. He's a picture of purity, and Pete will take great pleasure in his contamination.

Pete changes into his night clothes with haste, hardly taking his eyes off the man in his bed. There's a rush of heat to his crotch as he thinks of all the things he's wished for, all the things that may now become reality - he's half-hard in his underwear already. He had assured himself he'd resist, that he'd control himself until Patrick became more than a heartbeat, but once he's climbed into the bed, pulled the sheets over both of their bodies, he cannot deny himself any longer.

~*~

Pete laid in the dormitory, unable to sleep and watching the glittering shafts of moonlight as they filtered through the window. He could hear the calls of the owls beyond, feel the rush of the wind as it whispered through the rafters, an earthly midnight Mass. Everything human seemed so still in comparison to the whirring of nature's machinery, the thoughts and words of all people silenced to allow the songs of God's secondary creations.

But the boy across the room was shifting in the sheets. Pete watched him curiously, his back to Pete, his head ducked under the covers. He could hear rhythmic rustling, the boy's breathing faster than his usual slow hush and soft, stunted little noises skittering from him. Pete knew those sounds; they'd spill from his own lips often enough, accompanying such vulgar thoughts that even schoolboys daren't voice.

He wondered what Patrick was thinking about, whether he imagined his cock thrusting into one of the matrons, his hands cupping her breasts, kissing her lips, or if he harboured thoughts more twisted; a man's hand stroking him to climax, rough fingers nudged between the cheeks of his behind. Pete yearned to know.

His own cock grew in his underwear as he watched, listened, fantasised. Sliding his hand between his thighs, he touched himself lightly, his jaw clamped shut as he watched the boy opposite him writhe.

Flicking his eyes about the room, he scoured the darkness for signs of wakefulness in any of the other boys. They all remained still, and with a surge of excitement in his chest, Pete swung his legs over the side of the bed and crept across the room to Patrick's bed.

“Pete - what are you - ?”

“Shh,” Pete hissed, curling behind Patrick and sliding an arm around him. “I just - uh -” He searched under the covers until he found the hot, throbbing column of Patrick's cock. Patrick gasped, his eyes wide through the half-light, the bed creaking underneath them as Pete started to stroke him.

The sounds Patrick made were more holy than the murmurs of a church flock, more heavenly than the voice of God himself, yet more sinful than every lustful scoundrel in Hell. Pete pressed his nose to Patrick’s neck, smelling the salt and musk of his skin, drinking in his warmth and the pulse of his heart. He'd known right from the start that he had wanted more than simply Patrick's company, and now, finally, he was enveloping Patrick, taking care of him, watching him break apart underneath Pete's touch.

Patrick's cock felt as lovely as the rest of him; it was thick, dripping, twitching in Pete's palm and his balls were neat, fuzzy, drawn up tight in arousal. Even simply by touch, Pete knew the beauty of his body, his other hand nudging under Patrick's nightshirt to caress the soft skin of his belly.

The thrill that coursed through him when Patrick’s hand reached to press against Pete's dick was like no other. Instinctively, Pete snapped his hips forward, a whine slipping past his lips as Patrick's fingers crawled under his nightclothes and brushed over places that nobody but himself had ever touched. He wondered if he's Patrick's first too; it would later transpire that he was, a fact that would become one of Pete's crowning achievements.

Patrick's hips were thrusting, stunted, into Pete's hand, tiny moans spelling from his red wine lips. Pete felt the shudder through Patrick's body as he began to come, his release warm over Pete's hand. Pete wished to taste it, to feel it on his tongue like Holy Communion.

With a final stroke of Patrick's hand over his cock, Pete's climax rushed into him, stealing the breath from his lungs and the blood from his brain. They lay panting together for a few moments, Pete's lips still pushed to Patrick's neck, his hand still holding Patrick's softening cock, unable to quite let this bliss slip away.

Patrick turned to face him a little more, his hand retracted from Pete's underwear and his eyes wide with unknowing. For a few breaths, they simply stared, blinking through the darkness at each other, Pete's words evading him in the face of his cherub. He didn't think before he kissed Patrick - simply leaned forward and tasted his virgin lips, sloppy and searching, his tongue flailing about Patrick's teeth.

He considered, in that moment, how much he had craved to be inside Patrick, to possess him entirely, to climb within him and stay there for an eternity, a costume of holiness.

He clung to Patrick for as long as he could bear the burning between their lips, the might of God weighing down upon them. Then, he slipped back to his own bed, his hand still sticky with Patrick’s release. Under cover of moonlit sheets, he got his first taste of Heaven, his fingers pushed into his mouth and his mind reeling with the knowledge that he would never, ever let this boy go.

~*~

Pete wraps his hands around Patrick's bare chest, gracing his fingers over velvet-soft nipples and combing through the layer of hair across Patrick's skin. He presses kisses to his neck, a delicate peck to the stitched and bandaged cut in the back of his neck; he's snug to Patrick's back, his cock tantalisingly close to Patrick's arse.

It has filled out since Pete saw it last - it used to be neat, firm under Pete's hands, between his teeth. Now it's plump, soft, barely contained by his underwear and Pete hungers for it, sliding his hands to it and squeezing it. He begins to rock his hips against Patrick, humiliatingly hard already, and hastening to bring Patrick up to speed, a hand moving to grab at his crotch.

He'd hoped that this may be enough to wake Patrick, to knock him from his slumber by claiming him where he is most sensitive, but Patrick remains fast asleep, as does his cock. Even when Pete nudges a hand under his waistband, wraps his hand around it where it rests against his thigh, he shows no signs of wakefulness. His cock remains soft, unresponsive, so Pete whispers curses into the back of Patrick's neck and brings himself to climax quickly and with no fanfare, thrusting quick and sharp against Patrick's arse.

Once he's finished, sticky in his drawers and breathing heavy into Patrick's hair, he curls himself around Patrick's sleeping form, his arms wrapped around Patrick's belly and his knee nudged between Patrick's thighs. He lays his head on the pillow and lets his eyes fall shut, feeling the warmth of another body, of _Patrick's_ body, pressed up against him and feeling satisfaction like he hasn't felt in over a decade. Patrick is finally at his mercy.

~*~

When Pete wakes, he's alone.

The sheets are warm with summer air, but the space next to Pete is empty. Dull morning light shifts with the curtains, the world outside still deep in slumber and the sun not yet risen. Pete feels across the sheets, squinting through the darkness, but there is no-one to be found. Perhaps it was all just a dream.

Pushing himself up and onto his elbows, he peers around the room, seeing nothing but his usual bedroom, floorboards stained with acids and blood, the scent of death in the air. Tears burn behind his eyes at the revelation - Patrick is not here beside him, Patrick never was, perhaps Patrick did not die at all. He thumps his fist into the pillow and then against his own skull, wishing once again that his mind could work in the same way that everyone else's does. Why could he not want a wife, a child, a mansion in the countryside?

But frivolities such as those are reserved for fools such as Patrick. He lays himself down in the sheets once again, throwing his hands over his eyes and deciding that if Patrick is indeed alive, if he's still out there, in bed with his wife, holding her or kissing her or making love to her, Pete will find him, claim him for his own. She does not deserve him. No-one but Pete deserves him.

The tears do not fall this time - Pete pushes his face into the pillows and wills himself to sleep, imagining Patrick's blood flowing and his bones cracking under Pete's fists. It is as this moment that he hears a sound from beneath the floor.

Pete is no fool. There are no rats in his laboratory. Nothing in there is within forty miles of being alive, nothing moves, nothing stirs, nothing breathes. And yet, Pete hears it. Something is moving, stirring, breathing.

He swings his feet from the bed and stands, careful to keep quiet, his limbs stiff with sleep and his vision blurred. It is only just light enough for Pete to see, the room reduced to a series of dull grey shapes. He creeps towards the staircase, terrified of what he may find. Perhaps it's Mrs. Carpenter again, attempting to scare him with her tricks.

The stairs are painfully loud under his bare feet, a cacophony of creaking with each step, as if the skeleton of the house stirs with his weight. He walks with caution, his heart beating in his ears and his chest full with anxiety, the fear that night casts into man flowing rife through his veins. The dead should know better than to distress he who handles their dignity; Pete would not hesitate to hang Mrs. Carpenter's rotting head on the gates to the town should she think herself worthy to toy with his mind.

It's not Mrs. Carpenter. Mrs. Carpenter is spread over the floor of the laboratory, blackened blood smudged about her and a figure looming over her. When Pete steps off the final stair, a familiar face turns to stare at him.

"Patrick?"

The man doesn't reply. He rises to his feet, the dark hollows of his eyes fixed upon Pete, his features obscured in the gloom. His hands are dark with blood.

"You - you are alive," Pete breathes, his heart clawing its way into his throat. "You are _awake."_

Patrick continues to stare. Pete wishes to run to him, embrace him, kiss him until his lips are red as his fingertips. Yet, there's something about the look on Patrick's face that stops Pete in his tracks.

"What - what did you do to Mrs. Carpenter," Pete asks, in the same manner that a parent may ask what their child has drawn.

The erratic step Patrick takes towards him makes Pete stumble backwards, the stairs tripping him. He falls with a rush of air and lands on his backside, steadying himself on the banisters either side of him. "I improved her," Patrick whispers.

His voice is a hushed choir, a whisper of wind through churchyard ruins. Pete pursues it like a child chasing a dragonfly. "Do - do you remember me?" he questions, "I am Pete. Peter. I created you."

Patrick takes another step towards him, only this time, Pete has nowhere to run. "Creator," Patrick says simply, his chest heaving with violent breaths and his hands curling and uncurling repeatedly. Pete is usually so good at reading people - at knowing what is running around their tiny minds. Patrick was always easy to decipher, each and every emotion he felt printed in his eyes, his imagined composure a poorly-built mask. Yet _this_ Patrick - this magnificent creature, this nightmare made flesh - is a puzzle of twitching confusion. Pete daren't make any sudden movements.

"Yes. Death had taken you - but I took you back," Pete says, pride seeping through his voice like blood through a cassock. "And you - you are quite beautiful."

He stands only a few feet away now, his body illuminated by the greying light. Pete can see his eyes, dark pupils eclipsing the blue and something murderous stirring deep within them. When he pounces, Pete makes his peace with a death such as this. There is no greater privilege than to be escorted to hell by an embodiment of Lucifer himself.

But Patrick does not rip his heart from his chest or the pipes from his throat - he does not press his fingers into Pete's eye sockets or sink his foot into Pete's belly. Wrath, it would seem, can be easily confused with lust.

The burst of divine wonder that sings through Pete as Patrick's hands roam his chest and his teeth bite at his neck is quite unlike any other; he lets out a cry of joy as Patrick pins him to the stairs and begins to snap his hips forward, growls spilling from his lips. Pete's hands grab for Patrick's face and guide it towards his own, crushing their mouths together over and over, each kiss ringing in Pete's ears.

Patrick scrabbles to rid him of his shirt, his fingers raking reddened trails over Pete's skin as his night shirt rips. exposing his chest to Patrick's ravenous hands. Pete reaches for Patrick's underwear, his heart beating fast in his ears as he feels the hard line of Patrick's cock beneath the fabric. He strokes a hand over it, shapes it with his palm, and Patrick lets out the snarl of an animal, shoving Pete back into the stairs and pushing his hips forward.

There are so many things Pete wants from this moment. He wants Patrick's cock inside him, he wants to get on all fours for Patrick and let Patrick sink into his waiting arse. He wants to strip Patrick naked and pin him to the floor, to take what he's wanted for so many years, to fuck Patrick until he screams with pleasure, to claim Patrick's body for his own. He wants to own Patrick and be owned by him.  

The button of Patrick's underwear finally complies with Pete's demands, and Patrick's cock springs free, wet and red and leaking. Pete's mouth waters at the sight - he needs to taste it, to suck on Patrick's balls, to feel it stretch him open. Patrick bites at his neck, at his jaw, and Pete lets his legs fall apart, lets Patrick's hips settle between them, his cock bouncing with each thrust.

Pete had imagined something far from this; an innocent, newborn Patrick or a terrified replica of his past self, but _this -_ this is so much better than Pete could have hoped for. All Patrick seems to want is a hole to fuck - somewhere warm and tight to bury his dick - and Pete hastens to oblige him, shoving their underwear to their knees and letting his cock graze Patrick's, their moans twining like vines around a crucifix.

He pushes two fingers into his mouth, coating them with saliva and pressing them between his legs in an attempt to prepare himself for the slide of Patrick's cock inside him. Patrick, however, seems to have formed his own plan.

Clearly, Pete is taking far too long in providing him with a hole, so he climbs up a few stairs until his blood-gorged cock is level with Pete's mouth. He thrusts his hips forward, shoving his crotch into Pete's face, and when his aim fails him, he grabs at Pete's hair, holding his head steady. Pete is all too keen to let his mouth drop open, let Patrick push his cock down his throat until Patrick's balls are snug against his chin.

He closes his eyes as Patrick begins to thrust, manic growls mixing with slick, rhythmic sounds. Pete can barely breathe, barely think, Patrick's cock keeping his mouth stretched wide. Saliva begins to dribble down his chin and tears seep from his eyes.

Patrick is brutal in his pace, sinking deep into Pete's throat before pulling all the way out only to slam back in, his cock nudging the back of Pete's throat. Pete curls his hands to Patrick's arse, squeezing as his mouth is fucked, every part of his mind raised to dizzying heights.

Patrick's grunting grows louder as his balls draw up tighter to his body, slapping against Pete's chin with each impossibly deeper thrust. Pete can only moan around his length, pull breaths in through his nose and let Patrick hump his face like a dog in heat. He wonders if Clara ever let Patrick do this, if they ever shared this white-hot energy, this impassioned drive for sex and nothing else. The back of Pete's skull buzzes at the thought that his own tongue is removing all trace of Clara's blessed cunt.

The hand in Pete's hair suddenly grips tighter and the cock in his mouth pushes harder, faster, hot liquid spilling down Pete's throat, filling his mouth. Patrick presses himself into Pete's mouth as he finishes, his cock twitching with each spurt of his seed. Pete looks up at him as come dribbles from his lips, sees the sated desire in Patrick's lust-dark eyes and knows that this is everything, everything he's wanted since he first curled his fingers around Patrick's cock in the dark.

His own release goes almost unnoticed, a drop in the ocean of pleasure ebbing through his mind. He sucks on Patrick's softening cock, its length weighing on his tongue, electrifying his taste buds. He licks at it as Patrick finally begins to pull away, laps the come from Patrick's balls and the sweat from his skin. It is more blissful than he ever could have imagined.

It takes Pete a few moments to regain his composure once his mind ceases to wheel and his vision swims back to clarity. Patrick has collapsed beside him, a sheen of sweat coating his naked form and his mouth hanging open, lips gorged blood red and _alive_.

Pete barely allows himself to draw breath before he's pulling Patrick into a kiss, clashing teeth and writhing tongues and air breathed directly into each other's lungs. Patrick's hands clasp at his skin, pulling him close, absorbing Pete into his bloodstream. Pete lets him, willingly and wholeheartedly.

Enraptured seems an inadequate term to describe how Pete feels towards the man beside him. Pete is creator but created, possessor and possessed. He kisses Patrick until they are one being, one soul, two halves of the same whole finally restored unto one another.

“You're mine,” Pete tells Patrick, stroking a hand over his face. Patrick simply growls, pulls Pete tighter to him and gnaws affectionately at Pete's shoulder. Pete's no longer sure if he's in Heaven or in Hell - then again, he's no longer sure if it very much matters.

~*~

Patrick does not talk much. Pete spends the morning fawning over him, dressing him in the suit he was buried in, attempting to scrub his hands of Mrs Carpenter’s entrails. He whispers to himself occasionally, chanting Latin verse under his breath, or simply spouting complete nonsense at Pete whenever he sees fit. He's not at all what Pete expected.

“This is called the liver,” Pete tells him as they lean over what's left of Mr. Henderson - Mrs Carpenter is quite beyond solid innards - “although this gentleman’s is half destroyed by drink.”

Patrick nods, his face unreadable, until he reaches out a hand and shoves it into Mr Henderson’s guts, kneading until red oozes through his fingers. “Dead,” he tells Pete, nodding.

“Well - yes,” Pete says, “but don’t -” he pries Patrick's hand out of Mr. Henderson, “don't break him, because I can use him. For research,” he explains. “You have his blood in your veins.”

“I want to eat,” Patrick says suddenly, “Creator. May I eat this man?”

“No!” Pete exclaims, looking up at Patrick in alarm, “no, no. You must not eat people, Patrick.”

Patrick seems dismayed upon hearing this. “But - meat, I must have - _give_ me - eat!” he cries, shoving at Pete, his hands curling to Pete's forearms and squeezing until Pete's sure any more pressure would cause his bones to snap.

“I will give you food!” Pete insists, “I will feed you, I can get you meat.” Patrick's hands drop from him and Pete tries not to miss them.

There's something burning in Patrick's eyes as he recoils from Pete. “Yes. Feed. What falsehood can look so like truth? What falsehood? Creator - give.”

Pete nods, clasps Patrick's forearm and cups his face. He's Pete's to freely kiss, and he does so, pressing their mouths together and pushing his tongue into Patrick's mouth, only to break away with a cry of pain as Patrick bites down on it.

“No!” Pete scolds, the taste of blood filling his mouth. “Don't bite.”

“Food,” Patrick spits at him. “Give.”

“Good God, man, alright,” Pete sighs, the spike of pain in his tongue rushing straight to his cock. He ignores it - he'll seek Patrick's more intimate company this afternoon, this evening, all night. His mouth waters at the very thought of it.

 

"Do you remember me, Patrick?" Pete asks him as they sit at his half-broken table. Patrick did not seem at all impressed by the bread Pete placed in front of him, but after Pete promised he'd cook a steak for dinner, he settled, ignoring the knife and butter and grabbing the loaf, tearing into it with his teeth. Pete watches, hungry for something aside from food.

Patrick throws him a confused glance, yet continues to eat, a gentleman's manners quite lost on him. "You are Creator."

"Well - yes, but I am Peter. Your - your lover," Pete says. It is a lie that fools even Pete himself.

"Lover? I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity," Patrick replies, his tone rhythmic, as if reciting a psalm. "Glowed. Fire."

"You were - Heavenly, Patrick," Pete tells him, attempting to catch his gaze. He doesn't look up. "You are - Heavenly."

"It was the secrets of Heaven and Earth that I desired to learn," Patrick says, nodding to the beat of the words as he chews too big a mouthful of bread.

"We were deeply in love," Pete goes on, "we pursued no-one but each other. We made love every morning, every night. You desired to marry me. Had it been possible, we would have produced many children. Such was our devotion."

"Children," Patrick repeats, "children."

"Yes - infants," Pete clarifies, frowning as Patrick mutters _children_ under his breath between mouthfuls. His lips split like rose petals under crows' feet. Pete wants to see them bleed.

"Creator," Patrick sighs at his plate, "who is Peter."

"I am Peter," Pete says, "for that is my true name." Pete cannot deny that being lent the title of _creator_ sends a rush across his skin each time it crawls from Patrick's adoring lips - yet he'd sooner hear his own name in Patrick's honey-sweet tones, hear it sung, hear it sighed, hear it screamed. Pete fidgets in his seat, driven near mad by lust.

"Peter," Patrick says, "Peter. Devotion."

"You fell, but I revived you," Pete tells him, "I saved you, Patrick."

"I died," he says suddenly, raising tombstone eyes to meet Pete's. "I saw the gates of Heaven above me. I did not reach them."

A rush of anger curls in Pete's gut. "Your love was such that you chose to stay in this life. With me." Patrick will not rob him of this victory. Patrick will not belittle what Pete had toiled to achieve. "I saved you."

"You will never scare the Reaper," Patrick whispers, unblinking eyes boring into Pete's deadened soul. "You will not deny him his pound of flesh."

Pete cannot find it within himself to reply. Instead, he stares down at his own plate, empty as his stomach and grey as lifeless skin. He's rather lost his appetite. He decides that later, he shall write a brief, amicable letter to dear Clara.

~*~

It becomes very clear, very quickly that Patrick is not inclined to wait for anything at all.

Pete sits at his desk as the sun casts fire across the sky, his mind reeling with all that he's done, all that he now owns, a smile playing across his well-kissed lips. Patrick is stood beside him, a guardian Angel, a loyal Hell-hound, his hand resting lightly upon Pete's shoulder. Pete nuzzles against it every so often, letting Patrick play with his hair, poke at his face.

"Fuck," Patrick says all of a sudden, his hand stilling at the back of Pete's neck.

"What is it, my love?" Pete asks, looking up at him, lazy and blissful.

Patrick steps closer. "Want to - fuck. Now."

Pete's eyes flick to Patrick's crotch, where the fabric of his trousers is bulging with his arousal. Pete can only grin with pride, with greed. "As you wish."

It is a matter of seconds before Pete is being hurled onto his bed, his cock stirring and his heart cantering ahead. Patrick tumbles on top of him, scrabbling for his trousers and snarling with anxious lust.

Pete wants him completely, this time. He wants to feel Patrick's orgasm rush through him from the inside out, he wants to have someone so completely, be filled with someone so completely. He slides a hand into his underwear, his fingers pushing lightly against his hole, teasing himself open.

Patrick seems overcome with arousal, his fingers tearing at his trousers, desperate to free his aching cock. Pete does not think he’ll ever tire of seeing it burst from Patrick's finally open trousers, slick and flushed, just for Pete.

Pete does his best to stretch himself open with the man of his fantasies pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses to his chest, his hands rummaging through Pete's soul with the ease of a baker sifting flour. Every move he makes seems God-given; each time his eyes meet Pete's, he's lending him a slice of divinity. Pete savours every glance.

The sounds of spit-slick breaths fills the air as Patrick crushes his lips into Pete’s, his hips pushing forward rhymically, his cock brushing Pete’s balls, his hole, swollen fit to burst. Pete has three fingers inside himself, twisting and stretching, his mind dizzy with the anticipation of Patrick fucking him, using him.

Before he knows it, Patrick’s rolling him over, his hands scrambling for Pete’s hips, for his arse, and Pete allows himself to be pressed into the mattress, his face buried in the sheets and his arse high in the air, presented for Patrick, for the greedy length of his magnificent cock. “Fuck me,” Pete demands, “now.”

Patrick does not need to be told twice. His hips are already moving, his cock sliding over Pete’s cleft as he attempts to bury it inside Pete. Finally, with a growl of frustration, he pulls Pete’s cheeks apart with his thumbs and sinks into Pete’s hole, pushing his full length inside until his balls rest against Pete’s, throbbing with the anticipation of release.

The pain is exhilarating. It seems to sharpen Pete’s image of the world around him, bring him closer to the bloodstream of the earth, awaken him to the brush of the air around him, to the pulse of Patrick’s cock within him. Patrick’s hands grip tight to his hips as he begins to move, first in shallow, aborted twitches and then in hard, snarling shoves as he pulls Pete’s arse to meet his crotch.

The sheets rub against Pete's face as Patrick quickens his pace, Pete's cock throbbing, neglected. He moans into the mattress, his hand curled into fists as spikes of pain and pleasure crash into him, the hair on his arms standing on end when Patrick slams into his prostate. His knees give out underneath him and they both come crashing down, Patrick settling flat on top of him, his belly pressed to Pete's back and his lips kissing, biting at Pete's ear. He continues to fuck Pete, ramming his cock into Pete to the rhythm of his sex-crazed grunts.

All it takes to send Pete sailing over the edge is the friction of the mattress against his cock. He screams out, bursting with fire and brimstone, Patrick's cock sunk deep within him, filling his body and his soul. This, surely, is a level of Godliness that no priest will ever experience.

Pete lays, completed and satisfied, as Patrick fucks into him, his rhythm collapsing as he stutters to his release. He stills on top of Pete, panting into his shoulder, his growls fading to whimpers and his heart slowing.

"Want to - sleep," Patrick says finally, and so he does.

~*~

“Mrs. Stumph! How delightful it is to see you,” Pete lies as Clara appears on his doorstep, dressed solely in black and sporting a half-hearted smile. In the days before her visit, Mr. Henderson has met a sticky end - his innards smudged across Pete’s walls in the shape of Patrick’s hands. Their lives have become a circle of fucking, eating, sleeping. There is no Heaven that could match up to it.

“Mr. Wentz - I am truly sorry to intrude upon you in such a way, your letter implied that - whatever it is you have to tell me was of an urgent nature?” she asks, her voice like wind chimes, like coins on dead men’s tongues.

“Yes, that is correct - do come in,” Pete says, stepping aside and allowing her to sweep past him.

“Goodness, Mr. Wentz, are you truly so wretched as to be un-staffed? Because dear Patrick would never let a friend live so sparsely. If it is money that you need, I would be more than happy to -”

“No, thank you madam,” Pete tells her firmly, “I do not require staff, nor do I want them.” He stops at the end of the hallway, the door to the laboratory looming, lurking, waiting.

Clara casts a glance towards it, confusion pulling her dark eyebrows together, down-turning her sculpted lips. Pete understands why it was that Patrick married her - he imagines her pretty face was a great pleasure to ruin. "What is it you were so eager to discuss?" she asks, her gloved hands tying themselves in careful knots.

"Such haste, Miss Clara," Pete chuckles, "would you care for any tea?" He gestures to the lopsided staircase, flashing her a smile.

She quickly loses her beauty as her face twists into a frown. "No, thank you. And you may call me Mrs. Stumph," she informs him, in a tone that suggests that there is no _may_ about it.

"But you are no longer married," Pete says lightly, "Stumph is not your name to take."

"I'll take whatever name I please," she snaps, an anger lighting her eyes that makes Pete wish to tear them from her skull. "And I shall always be married in my own heart."

"Wrath is not an attractive quality in a woman," Pete informs her. This does not appear to dispel her frustration.

"And why should I give a damn what you think, Mr. Wentz," she spits, "If your intention was to woo me, you have quite failed. I would sooner take a toad for my husband."

Pete's tongue writhes in his mouth. "Woo you? Why, Miss Clara, you are ghastly. Your husband's rotting corpse would make a finer wife."

At this, she simply turns on her heel and walks away. Pete watches, bemused.

"Patrick!" he calls towards the door, rapping his knuckles against the wood. "Patrick, would you come out here?"

Clara looks around, alarm written bold across her face. "What are you playing at," she whispers, her eyes flickering between Pete and the turning doorknob. When Patrick steps into the light, her lips part in horror.

"I do believe you both are already acquainted," Pete smiles, watching Patrick's eyes trail to his former wife.

"Patrick?" she breathes, touching two fingers to her forehead and forming the sign of the cross over her chest. "It cannot be you - what witchcraft is this?" She looks to Pete as if he will provide her with answers - he will do no such thing.

"He is mine, now," Pete says, watching his creation stumble forward.

"I saw the gates of Heaven above me," Patrick whispers, "I saw the gates."

"Patrick," Clara cries, her voice wracked with sobs, "what has happened to you?!"

Patrick lurches towards her, and Pete stares, awaiting a bloodbath, a chorus of screams. "To protect - to love, to cherish," Patrick says as he nears her, "to protect. To love. To cherish."

Clara takes her hands from her face and places them, gently, carefully, upon Patrick's chest. "My darling," she says, "are you a spirit?" Pete awaits Patrick's demand to fuck, to eat, readies himself to watch Patrick tear her from her clothes and ravage her terrified form.

Instead, Patrick's hands move to cup her face. His thumbs stroke over her tear-stained cheeks, tilt her quivering jaw up towards him. "'Til death - only yours," he breathes. Then he kisses her, his lips pressing soft as snow, their mouths the touch of dew drops, melting together, becoming one. Patrick does not claw, bite, tear - instead, holds, savours, mends. Satan harbours not a quarter of the rage Pete feels.

"Patrick," Pete barks, his hands in fists at his sides. Patrick takes no notice, his hand sliding into Clara's hair as he pecks kisses to her lips, whispers sweet things to the air between them. "Patrick!"

Finally, Patrick looks towards Pete, his eyes wide, soft with something Pete hasn't seen in a long while. Pete strides towards him, grabs his arm, pulls it away from his wretched woman.

"Patrick," he says, bringing a hand to his lover's face. "Kill her."

Patrick's reaction is instant. The hand he's slid into Clara's hair tightens, and she cries out, scratching at his forearm. Patrick barely seems to notice, and simply wrenches her head sharply.

The sound of her neck snapping is sweeter than the songs of all the Angels that flank the arms of God. When Patrick lets go, she falls to the floor.

"Well done, my darling," Pete tells him, his hand still resting against Patrick's cheek. Patrick does not look at him. He looks instead at the floor, at the body of his wife.  

"Why - kill?" Patrick whispers.

"You belong to me," Pete says, attempting to catch Patrick's drifting gaze. "Not to her. She was going to take you from me."

But Patrick sinks to the floor, reaching not for Pete but for Clara. "To protect," he breathes, "to love. To cherish." He brushes her wide eyes closed, sweeps her elegantly curled hair from her face.

Pete nudges Clara's limp form with his boot. "Come, Patrick. We must get rid of her."

"Creator..." Patrick says, looking up at him, his hand cupping his wife's lifeless jaw. "Why must I do as you say?"

"Because you are mine," Pete says, "because you are in this world because of me, and me alone."

Patrick’s eyes solidify into something that is far from Heavenly. They are full of earth, of worms, of rotten flesh and broken bones. "This life is not yours to inflict," Patrick says, getting to his feet. "I saw the gates of Heaven above me. I did not reach them. _Creator_."

Pete smiles, steps towards Patrick. "You were meant for me." He slides his hand to Patrick's crotch, squeezes it in the hope of feeling that which lies beneath the fabric. "Now, fuck?"

"No," Patrick says, shaking his head. "Eat."

His hand flies to Pete's throat before he can say another word.

"You seek for knowledge," Patrick growls, his fingers crushing Pete's windpipe, his other hand pushing Pete into the wall, his rigid arms immune to Pete's struggles. "You are pursuing the same course. The same dangers."

Pete tries to talk, to plead, to breathe as his vision splits into two, two worlds, life and death, Heaven and Hell.

"You will not deny me my pound of flesh."

The world sinks into grey. There is no rush of excitement, no biblical fanfare. His Angel is not what he seems. Pete is numb. His knees collapse, clarity thrown into distortion.

Pete sees the gates of Heaven before him. He does not reach them.

~ _fin~_


End file.
